With numerous hardware experts on staff, FiftyThree was clearly built with a big product portfolio in mind.

In March of last year, the mobile design outfit FiftyThree released its first product, a superbly designed sketching app called Paper. It was elegant, intuitive and, in short order, wildly successful, racking up some 8 million downloads to date and earning the distinction of Best iPad App of 2012 from Apple. Now, FiftyThree is looking toward the future, with 15 million dollars in fresh VC funding to help it find the way.

The ecosystem could include online services for sharing ideas and potentially hardware tools as well.

The influx comes from a slew of firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Highline Ventures and others, as well as Twitter creator and Square CEO Jack Dorsey. And while Georg Petschnigg, FiftyThree’s co-founder, is tight-lipped about what exactly his team has in the works, the company remains focused on building a new generation of creativity tools, especially for people who never considered themselves artists or designers–that is, the people overlooked by most creativity applications.

That ethos is very much evident in Paper. Much of the app’s beauty comes from how it leaves behind the daunting complexity of other drawing apps, focusing instead on a core set of tools that let anyone sketch like they have an art school background. In Paper, hastily inked lines taper to a sharp point automatically, and a clever color-mixing tool makes it impossible to select the wrong shade. “It’s not just for pro artists and content creators,” Petschnigg says of the app. “We think that anyone with a mind can create, with the right tools and the right passion.”

The new funding, broadly speaking, will go towards the development of more of those types of tools. An average human’s arm’s reach is 53 centimeters, Petschnigg notes, a sort of invisible sphere encompassing head, heart, and blank canvass. FiftyThree’s main goal is to remove the obstacles that remain between those three coordinates. Discussing the still-vague plans for the company’s next phase, Petschnigg teased his vision for a “comprehensive suite for creation on the go,” an ecosystem that could include not just mobile software like Paper but online services for sharing ideas and potentially hardware tools as well.

The FiftyThree team already has a particularly impressive pedigree in the realm of hardware. Petschnigg and other founding employees hailed from Microsoft where they led the development of Courier, the captivating but ill-fated tablet concept. Others among the company’s ranks include Jim Koo, former director of mechanical engineering at Sonos, the speaker company known for its elegant hardware, and John Ikeda, a former Microsoft designer who helped shape the look of the original Kinect and Xbox 360 controller. The new funding will give FiftyThree the opportunity to make even more hires in these areas. “The plan is to build a great hard technology and cutting edge design team here in New York City,” Petschnigg says.

Over 80 million pages have been created using the Paper app.

But peering into the future of FiftyThree and companies like it, the question becomes: What do people actually need to create? The refrain after the iPad’s launch was that it was good for consumption, not creation, but apps like Paper have shown how tablets and fingers can in fact be terrific tools for bringing new ideas to life. Now, we’re approaching the next frontier of innovation in this space, where new modes of interaction, like smart accessories, could unlock new potential in our existing devices. Project Mighty, a recently-unveiled concept by Adobe comprising cloud-connected stylus and an intelligent, touchscreen-compatible ruler, is one such attempt.

But whatever fruits the new VC funding may yield, Petschnigg is certain that his team won’t be short on ideas. “From the very beginning of FiftyThree, we’ve had very ambitious plans.”

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